


Drain Flies: an Ode to Lovecraft

by okapi



Category: Cthulhu Mythos - H. P. Lovecraft, Original Work
Genre: Bugs & Insects, Cthulhu Mythos, Domestic, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-09-30
Updated: 2020-09-30
Packaged: 2021-03-07 22:16:03
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,500
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26734969
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/okapi/pseuds/okapi
Summary: She didn't want to summon the Old Ones, she just wanted to get rid of the flies.
Comments: 3
Kudos: 7





	Drain Flies: an Ode to Lovecraft

**Author's Note:**

> Written last year and posted here because the *&%! flies are back.

The flies are gone.  
  
They were. And now they aren’t.  
  
Someone once wrote that ‘no new horror can be more terrible than the daily torture of the commonplace.’  
  
It’s true. Especially when that daily torture is flies.  
  
At first, it was just one fly, circling about the kitchen on an early autumn day.  
  
SMACK!  
  
It was and then it wasn’t. Just a tiny brown smudge on a palm wiped on jeans.  
  
Two hours later, there were two flies in the kitchen.  
  
She ignored them, and then she didn’t.  
  
SMACK! SMACK!  
  
The first became another brown smudge. The second fled into the corner of the counter beneath the cupboards.  
  
She did not pursue the fugitive. She abandoned the kitchen.  
  
These flies were not even flies. Not the big fat drones with aqua-green, many-faceted eyes and buzzing calling cards. In fact, she didn’t even call them flies until later.  
  
In the beginning, they were just bugs.  
  
Small, gray, flying, crawling, walking flecks.  
  
Someone once wrote that ‘life is a hideous thing’ and that person probably woke to four tiny bugs settled around the drain of the kitchen sink like a table of senior citizens enjoying Early Bird Specials and discount coffee.  
  
She glared at the bugs as she put the kettle on.  
  
SLAM!  
  
One, no more. Three, scattered.  
  
One, to the wall.  
  
SMACK!  
  
Another smudge.  
  
Two to that blasted corner.  
  
They had their rhythm.  
  
Fly, hide, settle, crawl. Fly, hide, settle crawl.  
  
The first victim of colonization was the bananas, but banana skins are tough, so she ate all three for breakfast without compunction.  
  
The second victim was the tomatoes, which were put in sanctuary in the refrigerator.  
  
Everything else was sealed up tight.  
  
Whoever wrote ‘memories and possibilities are ever more hideous than realities’ probably never walked into a kitchen to ten tiny bugs dancing around the drain like tourists at a Vegas buffet waiting for the new batch of breaded shrimp to be laid out.  
  
The bugs lighted on everything, the big box of cookies, the little bags of cookies, and though she knew they could not taint the food inside the plastic and cardboard, knew that their microscopic, germ-ridden feet would never touch her precious cookies, she nevertheless, felt a hard Victorian disgust rise.  
  
It was unhygienic. It was dirty.  
  
SMACK! SMACK! SMACK!  
  
She would kill them all.  
  
SMACK! SMACK! SMACK!  
  
The next day, it occurred to her to ask: where were they coming from?  
  
She checked the storage unit just outside the apartment where her gross old neighbor was wont to leave tall bags of rotting garbage, one of which, she remembered with a shudder, had been teeming with just these kind of bugs when she’d hurried it to the dumpster a few weeks earlier.  
  
But, no, the storage unit was empty.  
  
She returned to the apartment and resumed the fight.  
  
SMACK! SMACK! SMACK!  
  
She pulled everything out of the corner, putting boxes and bags and bottles in the cupboards and sitting the catch-all basket directly in the middle of the counter.  
  
Cold tomatoes were no tomatoes. They went from the fridge to the trash. And now the trash was going out to the dumpster twice a day.  
  
When she went to the store the next day, she bought no produce. There was no point.  
  
Fifteen waited for her when she returned.  
  
She covered everything with lids and paper towels and aluminum foil and still she would turn her back to get a glass of water and spy one taking a hesitant strut atop her re-heated plate of macaroni and cheese.  
  
She lost her appetite.  
  
The bugs were now crossing into the living room, and a few bold ones had taken up residence in the bathroom.  
  
She saw one crawling on the bare bristles of her toothbrush and remembered that she rented.  
  
 _“Exterminator comes second and fourth Friday of the month. I’ll put you on the list. What kind of bugs?”_  
  
She described them. She did not say that she could hear their tiny flight patterns above her head in the middle of the night. Or that she suspected they crept along the bridge of her nose as she slept.  
  
“Oh, they're drain flies.”  
  
They had a name!  
  
Drain flies.  
  
“Here’s what you can do until Friday. Fill your drain with ice cubes. Then pour liquid dish detergent down the drain, for some reason Joy is the best…”  
  
Whoever wrote ‘from even the greatest of horrors irony is seldom absent’ was spot-on. There was no Joy in the apartment.  
  
“…then run cold water, run the compactor, and follow it up with a pot of boiling water. You can also try pouring pots of boiling water down the drain twice a day.”  
  
What alchemy!  
  
She went out for Joy. And came back to perform the ritual.  
  
Punching cubes of ice down the drain with the handle of a spatula. Adding Joy. Then turning on the water and flipping the switch of the compactor.  
  
GRRRR!  
  
A rumble to wake the sleeping.  
  
Then the cold water. Then tipping the big pot of boiling water into the sink.  
  
She liked the steam.  
  
But except for the one or two caught in the water itself, the rite had no effect.  
  
Friday arrived and so did two hulking giants in big muddy boots. They tromped through the apartment, which she’d cleaned for the occasion, and sprayed foam down the drain and then ran the taps and left.  
  
The flies persisted.  
  
On the plastic bag where she now kept her toothbrush. On the garbage can, empty or full. In the sink. In their favorite corner.  
  
She kept up the boiling water attacks until one day she forgot the pot of water simmering on the stove and went out, only to return two hours later to a very small pot of very hot water but, thankfully, no fire department.  
  
She braced herself before going into the kitchen but could not resist peeking into the sink to see the ever-present cabal.  
  
The bathroom contingent also showed no signs of going anywhere.  
  
 _“Exterminator comes second and fourth Friday of the month. I’ll put you on the list.”_  
  
It was time to take matters into her own hands.  
  
‘There be those who say that things and places have souls, and there be those who say they have not,’ but who’s to say what amount of piety and sinfulness is in an orange hardware store?  
  
She bought one of everything that seemed relevant to her plague: a pair of plastic, perforated apples in which one squirted a fly nectar; lanterns of sticky strips; an electric tennis racket; and an electric lantern.  
  
SNAP!  
  
It made a very satisfying blue spark and an even more satisfying sound, but she only killed one with the racket. The sticky lanterns were useless. The apples were the most effective, drowning about ten each with their sweet siren-song syrup.  
  
But she liked the lantern best.  
  
She’d huddle down in her quiet bed and wait for the noise.  
  
SNAP!  
  
Kill them! Kill them!  
  
SNAP!  
  
But even the lantern disappointed after a few days. As the flies learned to avoid the blue cylinder, as even smaller, younger flies were emerging to join the older, larger ones, her sanity began to fray.  
  
Someone once wrote ‘what has risen may sink, and what has sunk may rise, and so it was.  
  
When she thought she was in danger of snapping altogether, she sat down, cross-legged, in the middle of the kitchen and closed her eyes and decided to still her mind.  
  
At the bottom of her subconscious there might be an answer to whatever lay at the bottom of the drain.  
  
She heard the snap of the lantern. And then she heard nothing at all.  
  
She sank into herself, falling past her resentments and fears and longings, and then out the other end into another realm.  
  
Someone once wrote that ‘to come close to the nighted and abysmal secrets of the infinite and the ultimate—surely such a thing was worth the risk of one’s life, soul, and sanity!’  
  
Keep the secret of the infinite, she argued. Just get rid of the flies!  
  
She found herself in a city carved from ice. She found herself in a swamp where drums beat. She found herself west of Arkham, where the hills rise wild, and there are valleys with deep woods that no axe has ever cut.  
  
She found herself all these places at once.  
  
And she saw them, the octopus-dragon creatures of indescribable color.  
  
She wasn’t afraid.  
  
She reached out her arm, and they reached out theirs, and she hoped they read her plight in her touch.  
  
They must’ve.  
  
Because they came back with her.  
  
And ate the flies.  
  
She’d read somewhere ‘Do not call up any that you can not put down,’ but she had no desire to put them down. Let them do what they pleased.  
  
She returned from the store with a bunch of bright yellow bananas and set them on the counter.  
  
And ate them in peace.

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you for reading! All the quotes are from H.P. Lovecraft and his works.


End file.
